CAIRO, EGYPT—According to an Ahram Online report, Mostafa Waziri, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, announced that preliminary studies of the three skeletons discovered in a massive granite sarcophagus in Alexandria suggest the bones belonged to a young woman and two men. The woman is thought to have died between the ages of 20 and 25, and stood about five feet, four inches tall. One of the men, who was about as tall as the woman, lived to between 35 and 39 years of age, while the second man died between the ages of 40 and 44, and stood about five feet, eleven inches tall. Zeinab Hashish, director of the Department of Skeleton Remains Studies at the Ministry of Antiquities, said a healed hole in this man’s skull may have been the result of surgical trepanation, which is thought to have been a rare practice in Egypt. The people are thought to have been buried in phases, since the skeletons were stacked inside the sarcophagus. Examination of the contents of the coffin also yielded several small, intricately decorated gold panels, Waziri said. The liquid found inside the granite sarcophagus is thought to be wastewater that seeped into the tomb, but it is undergoing analysis. To read in-depth about new findings related to the Hyksos, foreigners who ruled Egypt for a century, go to “The Rulers of Foreign Lands.”
